by Eliose Bellard

Background

Where do I begin without sounding like a broken record? Many of you have heard me extol the need for 'information literacy' to be incorporated into the Adelphi curriculum at meetings, classes and any other time I can bend an ear. The Association of College and research libraries has incorporated information literacy competencies into the Standards for Higher Education and Middle States has adopted those standards for accreditation. In fact, our own General Education Committee has included 'information literacy' as one of its goals and objectives for the new freshman seminar proposal to be instituted next fall.

Most faculty feel they do their part by having a librarian come to their classes and instruct the students on library resources, while others feel their students merely need some computer training in order to transfer traditional library skills to this new online environment. I believe, however, that students need more than instruction on library resources or training on database mechanics to cope with the volume of information and changing information environment that faces them today. What is needed is a more systematic and structured approach to teaching these skills to students.

What is an information literate student?

Information literacy is the intellectual framework that students use to acquire information regardless of the discipline, source, or format. An information literate student means having the ability to understand the need for information, how to access and retrieve information, and navigate a variety of sources and formats --whether online or in print. An information literate person can evaluate the information effectively for quality, validity, and reliability in terms of the knowledge they seek, and can use the information both productively and in an ethical manner.

For the most part, students do not come to the academic arena with any information literacy skills in place. Library and research skills are not taught in high school or middle school. Many are computer literate but really do not know how to search or locate information beyond a basic search screen. Given the amount of available information, the research process has become far to complex for anyone to try to learn all these skills on their own. The information landscape is changing so rapidly that even librarians who are trained specialists have difficulty keeping abreast of the continuous advances. Bringing a librarian to your class to teach some of these skills, can be very helpful, but doesn't begin to address the information literacy needs of the students.

The Internet Challenge

With the electronic library, and commercial search engines so easy to access, many students are relying more and more on the internet to meet their informational needs. This removes them further from the traditional library and librarians where they would be introduced to some information literacy concepts. Without information literacy instruction using electronic libraries and search engines effectively and efficiently becomes even more difficult. Students don't really understand the differences between a search engine and a research database. Many can not distinguish the difference between a web page and a published article.

To further complicate matters, there is a lot of misinformation concerning the internet. Take for instance the myth that… "Everything is on the internet!" Many students think that all information has been put online, they don't think about the fact that web sites and search engines don't store information over time like a library. The World Wide Web is a fluid medium that is constantly changing and sites are replaced, edited and changed all the time. Often, most of the quality resources on the net are password protected and therefore not freely accessible through search engines. Clearly the Internet presents educators with many challenges.

Quantity versus Quality

Even when students use library resources, the volume of references can be intimidating and overwhelming. The quantity of sources available to students, makes locating quality sources more frustrating and time consuming. Let me give you an example. If a student needs information on a topic, they have access not only to our library resources, but also the resources of libraries and databases from all over the world. Via a PC, students can: ---access our catalog and other catalogs throughout the world
-- view millions of websites on the Internet
--search hundreds of online databases that index thousands of journals, magazine and newspapers in every discipline for every subject, available in full text, and/or
--retrieve an interlibrary loan document.
From this plethora of sources, they must select the best available sources, evaluate the material for validity, and deal with a variety of digital formats. One can understand why some students get overwhelmed, frustrated or just give up. Having students expend so much energy on the research process shifts their focus from actually learning.

A Prescription

I would recommend that information literacy must be initiated early in the Adelphi student's academic career and built upon throughout the curriculum in graduated stages. Freshman need to be introduced to finding valid information resources in the library and on the web, and how to use them in the academic arena; sophomores and juniors can build upon these basics and be taught how to identify primary and secondary sources, or locate empirical research in scholarly journals related to their field; and seniors or graduate students should learn how to locate and use more advanced subject specific tools and sources to validate their own research.

More and more teaching faculty see a need for library instruction beyond basic skills and are requesting classes that are subject related or devoted to web resources and evaluation. The library has tripled its instruction classes in the last three years, and demand continues to grow for these classes. Some Universities and Colleges are now placing a variety of information literacy competency standards into courses that are writing intensive for each discipline. This process would build on the basic foundations of information literacy by introducing more advanced skills and strategies for life long learning.

No librarian can teach all that is necessary in one or two classes. Having information literacy skills distributed throughout the disciplines and taught at different levels would guarantee that students are getting all the skills necessary in a more cohesive and collaborative environment. This would eventually eliminate some of the redundancy when librarians teach the information literacy classes for the more subject specific or assignment related classes, and would allow for more hands-on learning and further investigation.

The Library currently has basic components of information literacy in place throughout the campus. All undergraduate incoming freshman and the Honors college students get two 50 minute classes. The need now is to get undergraduates beyond the basic competencies. On the graduate level the School of Social Work Masters Program gets a three hour mandatory class. Having all the graduate programs institute something similar would be beneficial. It would guarantee that all our students would be introduced to the basics, especially some anxious older students who are returning after several years away from the academic arena It is imperative we meet the needs of all our students at several different levels.

In conclusion, information literacy education needs to be integrated more systematically into the curriculum at Adelphi. It is a necessary part of the educational process that every student needs in order to be a successful graduate of our institution.